Monday, July 28, 2008

Behold the humble cardboard box - our house is full of these,
and today I am taking a break from sewing to extol its virtues
as a craft medium.

Emily loves playing post office. After a trip to the Children's
Museum a couple of years ago, she wanted to recreate the
experience of sorting and delivering letters. Over the ensuing
months, we collected various accessories (scroll down) to
help her do just that - a small mail bag, re-used envelopes,
square stickers for stamps, rectangular stickers for address labels,
and a random coat or two for her uniform. This weekend, watching
her and Jenna make a multitude of letters, an idea formed in my head
that I couldn't get out. So while they were napping, I found a large
cardboard box that once contained diapers and made this mailbox

The girls were thrilled - Jenna mostly because it was
something else in she could use her markers on.

We also collected all the floating stationery into a sort
of mail kit: a box of envelopes, hand-drawn postcards,
and plain white labels of different sizes for home-made
address labels (just names for now) and colorful stamps.
They prefer to enclose entire drawings in their envelopes
to text, which is just as well since no one can read
their letters anyway.

and after these letters are put into the mailbox, collected and
sorted, they go (theoretically) into individual mailboxes like these:

These were made last year, when Jenna was a bald baby
and Kate wasn't yet born. We used whichever flat boxes
were lying around in the house at the time - Kleenex boxes
and muffin mix boxes, for instance - and wrapped them with tissue
paper, because I hadn't gotten round to buying construction paper
then. Adding faces made it easier for Emily to identify family
members. Eventually we will add Kate's face and change Jenna's
to avoid mixing up the babies. I later found another mailbox
design here which was faster to make. Smart.

And here's a cardboard mailbox with a flag of the sort
we have for our house. This was our maildrop for a long time,
so Emily would put all her stamped envelopes here to be picked
up by the "mailman". Now with the new mailbox made this
weekend, this one might be out of a job.

The possibilities are endless, really, with cardboard boxes.
You make them, the kids play with them, and when they
outgrow them or they disintegrate, you throw them away.
Here's a collection of things that I made in response to the girls'
different pretend-play themes over the few years we've lived here.

Small kennel made out of a diaper wipes box.

Guitar made of miscellaneous cardboard and rubber bands.
We had just moved into our house and my real guitar was
being shipped with our other possessions. One of Emily's (then 1)
first words was "guitar". With all the cardboard lying around
after moving and time on my hands in the winter, I made the
first of the cardboard toys. Sadly, this guitar eventually
fell apart so we threw it away.

Boat. The mast is a PVC pipe - we thought it was probably sturdier.

Oven. The idea came from an old issue of Family Fun magazine -
paper plates for burners, inexpensive plastic knobs from a
hardware store so they actually turn, and the inner cardboard tube
of a paper towel roll for the door handle. The design had to be
tweaked slightly to allow for heavy-duty baking - the one in
the magazine had a simpler door that stayed shut by friction
because it fit exactly in the opening. I added an inner frame
with velcro (tried magnets but they didn't work as well)
for smoother opening and closing. I couldn't find a link to the
original oven at the Family Fun site, but here's a link to their
very neat kitchen in a box.

Puppet stage with fabric curtains sliding on an
internal wooden rod with small circular rings.
Jenna has been at it with her markers, too, decorating.

Castle, made out of a packing box for glass tumblers
from Ikea. The turrets/towers are the inner tubes of
paper towels topped with cardboard cones. The entire
thing is covered with aluminum foil except for the drawbridge.
Emily decorated it with adhesive jewels and stuck in the flags.
This was a little fancier than the other cardboard playthings
because it was the centerpiece for Emily's princess party and we
wedged a disposable baking tray inside it to hold her princess cookies.

Donut Shop/Candy Emporium/General Store,
made out of a large freezer box. I cut several windows
and a skylight in the roof to brighten the interior but we
still needed one of those push-on-push-off night lights.
Anyone know where to get a little battery-powered
kerosene/camping lantern?

There's a cardboard shelf just under the display window
for stocking jars of play candy, foam lollipops or sock donuts,
depending on whether Emily feels like selling sweets

or donuts (yes, she does deliveries, too).

Some of these toys have seen better days, surely.
Some have been decorated to death. And some, like this
donut house, is a work in progress. I recently added
the floor to give it more stability. Sometime soon I want to
have the kids paint the outside with some waterproof paint
(and markers, no doubt) . And turn, with chalkboard paint
(most craft stores will have tins of these) an area or two
(like where the donut shop sign is now) into chalkboards
for the kids to write the store name or the daily menu.
Must get to it before winter.

Hopefully this post has given you some ideas of things to do
with the humble cardboard box. The hardest part for me
is sequencing in my head - you know, determining which part
to attach or cut before which - very much like sewing, actually.
All you need are these - scissors (utility scissors work best),
craft knife/utility knife/box cutter, wide masking tape and glue.
UHU glue is my very favorite craft glue - dries clear in seconds,
will not cause bodily harm like superglue, needs no electricity
and unlike white glue, actually works.

As a child, one of my favorite things to play with was a roll
of Scotch tape, with which I'd assemble all sorts of things
around the house, including my own broken eyeglasses.
There was nothing Scotch tape couldn't fix or make.
And mum and dad liked to push their limits and make things
other people had written off as impossible or just not worth
the effort. I make stuff with cardboard now sometimes to push
my own limits, occasionally because it's easier to make something
than go scouting in stores or online for it, often because it's
daylight robbery what some places charge for similar toys in plastic,
largely for pure fun, but mostly so that the kids get used to the idea
that they can make anything if they want to.

obvious aesthetic value, also add a moisturizing quality to the scrub.

There are many recipes on the internet and most are so simple

that it's baffling why a person would spend so much money at

a spa getting a scrub. The recipe for this scrub was from Anitra Brown

and I thought I'd include it here:

Half cup oil (we used olive oil, jojoba, grapeseed, even canola!)

1 cup salt (we used sea salt, regular table salt and whichever type of salt we could find in our friend's kitchen when our original supply ran out - the coarser the grain, the coarser and more exfoliating the scrub, of course).

Hello and Welcome!

I am a gratefully unemployed mom of three girls, all of whom are growing up much too soon! I like piles of warm, fresh laundry, the smell of salt air near the beach where I used to live, making lists, anything round (like heads) and the quiet evenings sitting with the man of the house after the kids are in bed.

Copyright

You are welcome to link to this blog and to any post on this blog and use ONE or TWO photos for that purpose. Do not use photos of my children. You are welcome to pin images from my blog, if those photos do not have my children's faces in them. Please contact me if you want to use the text on, or more photos from, this blog. Do not post my tutorials on your sites. Do not translate tutorials from this blog into other languages on your site. The ideas and instructions in the tutorials are free - but please use them to only make stuff for yourself or for gifts and not to sell. Ta! For more information, this and this might be helpful.